When Stars Are Scattered Read online

  The kites clattered inside, clinging to the walls, chirping, squealing with the joy of worshiping God.

  Jose, the imam—Adéla’s husband—took the stand, clutching a Qur’an. He gazed out over the crowd, his eyes fierce even behind the scratched, crooked glasses. “What does it mean to struggle?”

  It hit Ahmed. A feeling of lightness.

  Love.

  He looked behind him and saw kites staring, their mouths open in creepy, sharp-toothed grins. He could almost hear kite thoughts, blowing in and out as if they were on the wind as well. Friends. Sadeaki. Salaam. Peace.

  Damn it, this wasn’t right. Their emotions shoved into his head, chattered, crowded out Ahmed’s thoughts like some kind of robe-wearing cultish mind control.

  Jose said, “Is that jihad? Do we trust in the answers of men or God? The kites will not fight. We have learned this in so many sad ways. The Qur’an asks us all a question. Will you not fight in the cause of the oppressed?”

  Wouldn’t fight? Ahmed massaged his forehead. What sentient species wouldn’t fight? In the hundred years of faster-than-light travel, humans had encountered a handful of sentient species. None had any technology to speak of—but they all fought wars, if just with spears and darts. It was a constant.

  Ahmed couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything other than that cloying feeling, like his soul was being soaked in syrup.

  The congregation rose to pray. “Allahu akbar.” Choking voices. Weeping voices. “Allahu akbar.” And in the background, the chirping kites’ voices.

  Ahmed bolted, pushing through the crowd, away from the kites, out the door. He slowed only once he was across the common area, well away from those damn things. He walked quickly toward the clinic, on the other side of the dusty common area.

  Pheromones! Nose plugs. Cotton.

  * * *

  She watched the doctor disappear inside, escaping the crowd of kites, and couldn’t bring herself to follow him through the main entrance. It was a shame. She’d hoped for someone who could fit into the community. He wouldn’t last long. He’d be out with the next shipment.

  Can I blame him? Adéla thought. What would I do, if I had a choice?

  She went into the mosque through the side, did her ablutions, took Pablo to sit with her and sat, listening to Jose—and nearly fell over while she was praying. One of the other women took her arm and whispered, “Get some sleep! You were up all night! We’ll watch your son.”

  That was how she found herself stumbling along the pathway by the river, toward their house, half-asleep, slapping herself as she went. “Should have this handled,” she muttered. “Done it often enough.” God, how good sleep sounded when you’d been nursing sixteen hours a day.

  “Don’t move,” said a grating voice. “Ain’t looking to be heard.”

  Adéla turned to find herself staring down a shotgun.

  “Listen good.” The woman’s face was as worn and wrinkled as a kite’s, creases deep around those dark eyes. Her pants were wet and caked in river mud. A homesteader. One of the Nova Christos, from a settlement to the east. Adéla had never seen one. “I know you got supplies in.”

  Adéla swallowed. How many were here? What were they going to do? Oh God—would they hurt Sofia, at the clinic?

  “We need antibiotics,” the homesteader woman said. “Fifteen kilos. Folks’re sick.”

  “That?” Adéla couldn’t keep surprise out of her voice. “We can spare that much easily.”

  “Then you take me right there to that shed of yours.”

  Adéla led her to the supply shed and unlatched it. Penicillin was right next to the entrance. “Here,” she said, withdrawing three five-kilogram packs.

  “This all of it?”

  Couldn’t this empty-worlder read? Each pack declared its weight. Probably not, Adéla realized. A life coaxing crops from Isach, perhaps following life as an asteroid miner—neither was conducive to much reading. “This is it.”

  “That’s what I need, then.” She scowled. A single kite tossed itself through the air above, in the blasting wind. “Your damn pets ate all the corn.” She shifted the shotgun, slowly, as if she were about to take a shot. Adéla could, for a moment, almost see it—the shots tearing through the kites, the ragged, bloody holes, the bodies spinning to the ground, the screams and the rush of pain through the empathic link and—

  The homesteader lowered her gun. “They’re animals. How you don’t see it? Animals.”

  “You know they’re dying.” Adéla regretted it as soon as she said it. The gun barrel seemed to be staring at her. Pablo. Sofia. Jose would have rushed the homesteader by now.

  “About time.” And yet the woman’s creased scowl softened. “We’re all going to die, this rate.”

  She turned and ran, loping, into the creek bed, where she disappeared.

  Adéla’s heart pounded so hard she could hardly see. “Ya Allah,” she whispered. “Keep us safe.” The prayer seemed even more hollow than usual.

  * * *

  Ahmed went into the clinic through the back, avoiding the sickroom full of kites. There was a keening noise coming from the exam room and lab. A kite? Ahmed hesitated. He took a deep breath. He would just rush the little thing, whatever it was doing, back to its bed. He would just walk in there and ignore that creepy love and push the kite out—

  It wasn’t a kite. It was Sofia. Wearing scrubs, holding the coffee-stained dress and crying. Tears made small trails down her face that caught the light.

  “Oh, oh, sorry, sorry Doctor, hi.” She turned away from him. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I…” She let out a little half-laugh. “I don’t know.”

  “Hold on. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Ahmed went back through the exit. He’d thrown most of his personal goods in with the medical supplies, in a haphazard stack inside the storage shed, so he had to search through several dozen boxes to find what he wanted.

  That was odd. He could have sworn there was more penicillin. It would be a hell of a thing to explain on inventory reports, missing penicillin. But if worst came to worst, he had the equipment to clone mold and extract it—the Islamic Confederation had paid, no questions asked, for the most up-to-date lab Ahmed could build here.

  When he returned, Sofia was washing her face. She had folded the stained dress up neatly on the exam table.

  Ahmed held up the box. “I know this doesn’t help all that much,” Ahmed said. “I want you to have this. All of it.” He pressed the box of chocolate rations into her arms. “It’s not often you get a new dress.”

  “I can’t take—”

  “Don’t fight it. I don’t even like chocolate,” he lied. He had always loved chocolate nearly as much as whiskey.

  She took the box. “Thank you.” And then, “You’re crazy. Everyone loves chocolate. Even the kites like it, and they eat bugs.”

  “Good meat on a cricket,” Ahmed deadpanned.

  She didn’t laugh. “We ate bugs last year. The first shipment flooded and we had no food at all. The kites showed us where the good grubs were, along the creek. I know they’re haram and everything, but my papí said that God would understand.” She looked as if she wanted Ahmed’s approval for eating haram bugs. He nodded in what he hoped was a reassuring way. It seemed to work. Sofia went on, “I was really hungry, so I really didn’t notice how gross they were, but then, a couple of months ago, me and Jessie tried one again, just to see. I almost threw up.”

  “That’s … that’s an interesting story.”

  Sofia shrugged, and for a moment, sounded like an average teenager. “There’s not much to do here.” She looked at the exam room, and the rows of kites. “Three more came in sick while you were in jumua. I found one dead this morning.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “My papí is having dinner brought up here,” Sofia said. “He wants to eat with you.”

  “Oh, no, ah, I’m way too busy to sit down for dinner tonight,” Ahmed said
.

  “No you’re not.” She glared. “My dad is the imam.”

  Ahmed closed his eyes, not trusting his expression. “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Jose’s arm stirred Adéla awake. “Habibati.”

  She leaped up and gasped. “No! I—” She clutched his arm. “I—”

  “You’re okay.” He pulled her closer. “Nightmare?”

  “Something happened.” She looked down. She was halfway out of her good clothes, and halfway into scrubs. She had fallen asleep, if not a restful sleep—she’d dreamed of running, running to try and find her children, and she could not find them anywhere. Adéla staggered up, threw off her half-buttoned pants, pulled on scrub pants, and sat at the mirror that faced their tiny living room, doubling as half a bathroom.

  She rubbed cold water into the bags under her eyes and began re-pinning her hijab.

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” Her heart beat away at her ribs.

  “What’s wrong?” He walked over to where she was.

  “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Because you’re about to spear yourself,” he said. Adéla looked down at her hands and saw they were indeed shaking, to the point where the long pin in her hand was pressing against the skin of her other hand, instead of the fabric of the hijab.

  He stood over her, brushed a hand across her hair where it had come free of the hijab. He smelled good; a heady mixture of the incense from the mosque, soil, corn, and a hint of the chocolate they’d all been eating. She closed her eyes and leaned against his waist.

  “You need someone to help you with that?”

  “What would the ummah say if they knew the imam offered to wrap his wife’s hijab?”

  “The ummah doesn’t need to know what happens in our bedroom. As I’ve told certain old ladies many times.” He gave a smart-mouthed grin that she hadn’t seen in well over a month. “I just want to see if I can do it as well as you. Or better.”

  “You…” He’d asked before, but she’d always laughed it off. Jose was the sort of man who was never satisfied with anything unless he’d done it himself.

  But it was good to see him smile. She held up the pin. “If you dare, oh wise imam.”

  He leaned down in front of her, his eyes narrowed in concentration, and pinned it, first under her chin, then wrapped the hijab around her head, pinned it again, and stared in confusion. “I can get this part,” he said. “Hold on.” She almost told him just to leave it long, but finally, with more skill than she would want him to know he had, he pinned it back twice, leaving a large fold at her neck.

  “Am I supposed to look like a rooster?”

  “You tuck that into your blouse!” He stood up. “You know that. I think, for my first time, I did everything right.”

  She hated to admit it, because she loved toying with him, but he had done a fair job. “How does it feel to know everything, oh wise imam?”

  “I just pay attention,” he said. She turned around to see him taking up most of the tiny space between the stove and cupboards in their tiny kitchen. “So, seriously, what happened?”

  Adéla paused, holding a bundle of fabric in her hand.

  She wished someone else had asked first. The doctor, or Sofia, or the other Muslims, or even a kite. Jose would feel betrayed if she didn’t tell him first. But he’d also…I need to tell him first. He’s not just my husband; he is the imam. The community has to know. She wished she didn’t have to use that kind of logic so often. “I saw a homesteader.”

  “What?” Jose’s gaze hardened. “Where? How many? When?”

  “Just one. She wanted penicillin. I got her some. It was well over an hour ago. She’ll be far away by now.” Jose made a noise of disbelief. “It’s okay, we have enough penicillin.”

  “I can’t believe it! Here! In the camp! In our own camp? They came in here!” Jose stalked out of the kitchen, toward the closet where he kept his home office. “I have to call the men together. As soon as we’re done eating, I have to…”

  His words seemed to blur together. She snuck across the room to the cupboard where he had been. He’d been the one stocking this yesterday, while she was busy helping up at the clinic.

  The cupboard was full of bullets. Packs of bullets, in small, oiled-cloth wrapped, flat packages, stacked atop each other.

  Pablo chose that moment to open the door and come running in. “Mamí, Mamí, Mamí, where’s the new spaceship? Where?” He pulled at the hem of her dress. “Where?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing. Her hand still shook.

  Pablo ran to the table where he had left his new toy and picked it up, his face lighting up. “Spaceship!” He leaped in the air. “Mamí, it’s still here!” She’d ordered a new toy for her son, and a new dress for her daughter, with the resupply.

  “Of course it is, habibi,” Adéla said. She walked into the home office slowly. Jose was typing, hard enough that she had to raise her voice over the clatter of the keyboard. “Jose,” she said. “What are you using all those bullets for?”

  “Hunting,” he said, without missing a beat. “Aaron is going tonight.”

  “Didn’t Aaron get his own ration of bullets?”

  “I’m doling out the rations now,” Jose said. “It’s safer that way.”

  Adéla almost said it. What are you planning? Have you thought about our children? She wished she could believe that would make a difference. What will change?

  “Next time this happens, tell me right away,” he said. “We need to know everything they’re planning.”

  The words died on Adéla’s tongue.

  She turned and slipped out.

  Behind her, the house shuddered in the wind, prefabricated metal beams creaking against the concrete that moored them. Ahead of her, wind swept dust clouds over the trees that grew crookedly from the riverbed.

  Adéla walked to the edge of the river, looked out at the water where the homesteader had come from a moment before. It was beautiful, that small flat trickle of water, amongst the Isachian reeds and twisted, white-barked trees. All the more beautiful because it grew in the middle of the brown plains.

  She loved this planet. They had made Pablo here. Sofia had grown from a little girl to a woman here. She had come to love the kites here, in their innocence, in their peace, for their strength when supplies ran out, for their strange senses of humor.

  And Jose … had stopped smiling here.

  Adéla put her arms around herself. It wouldn’t take long. She would walk back in there, and ask him what he was planning, and he would talk about how helpless they were, watching the kites die. She would ask him to be patient, to wait and find out what the doctor could find out, to not do anything rash, and he would say they were already out of time, and he would leave to pray, because he was a good man, one who never raised his voice or showed his rage, saved it all for his prayers, and sometimes she would have sold her blood to know what he said in those prayers. And what answers he received.

  * * *

  The whole family sat around the exam room, plates in laps, full of meat, cornbread, and rehydrated peas. All except for Pablo, Sofia’s three-year-old brother, who held up his spaceship and yelled “Whoosh!”

  “Settling in, Doctor?” Jose said. “Adéla says you know your way around a lot better than our last doctor. Of course, he was just a field medic. When they said they were sending a virologist, I fell to my knees and thanked God over and over again.” He took another bite of cornbread. “Then they said they were sending sugar, and Isach turned into paradise itself.”

  “Sofia, eat,” Adéla said. Sofia was gingerly sliding the meat away from her other food.

  “It’s a rat,” Sofia said.

  “Young woman,” Adéla said, “you’ve only read about Earth rats in books, and thugs are nothing like them.”

  “Oh, this is the thing that was poking around the landing site?” Ahmed asked. “Little brown thing with a long
tail?”

  “Yes,” said Jose. “We call them thugs, because they fight each other endlessly. Don’t worry, they’re halal. They’ll maul each other, but they eat bugs and grass.” He half-smiled and raised a forkful of meat. “I still dream of beef.”

  “Its cranial shape is kind of like the kites,” Ahmed said. “Probably a common ancestor.”

  “I’m not eating a kite!” Sofia shrieked.

  Pablo jumped into his mother’s lap, holding up the spaceship. “Whoosh! Whoosh! Spaceship takes us all away! Whoosh!”

  “Not so loud, Pablo,” Adéla said. She ruffled her son’s hair. “Little habibi.”

  “Mamí, let go,” Pablo said. “I need to fly spaceship.”

  Adéla asked, “I always wonder about having him this close to the kites. Do you think he’s in any danger from the virus, doctor?”

  Jose went oddly quiet.

  “Yes,” Ahmed said. “It’s possible. Unusual, but I studied primaria on Xara for five years. That was the first virus to jump from one sentient species to another, and the Xarans were so insular that we couldn’t discover anything about its origins. Interesting. Really interesting, the more you look at it. Humans in the first stages actually reported that they could see or hear better.” He started to take another bite, then put down his fork and kept talking. “Take an alien virus, and let it mix its genetic material with a human host cell, and even once the virus is dead, and even once you kill the pathogen, the cell is still affected, acting strange, so to speak, because it didn’t co-evolve with the virus. Sometimes it’s irreparably damaged, sometimes it’s—” He stopped. “Sorry. I can go on.”

  Adéla smiled at him. “Look, we found his passion.”

  “If it’s a genetically engineered virus,” Jose said, “it won’t jump. They’re made to target one population only.”